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Part 18: .hack Mutation - //Update 05 - Cubia

//Update 05

Greetings everyone! I trust everyone is doing well on this eve of the anniversary of Pluto's Kiss? Failing that, at least I hope everyone is at least having a safe and happy holiday!

Today's update is gonna be a fun one. We've only got one objective today, and that is to fight Cubia. In case anyone needs a refresher on Cubia...

Yeah. We've got a bit of a score to settle for the stomping he gave us at the end of the last game. So without further ado, let's get started! Oh right. One quick thing: I've started including BGM tracks for those of you that like that sort of thing. Keep an eye out for them!

The game's "forcing" us to take Mistral. Into a boss dungeon. If I HAVE to. I mean, why would I want to take the single most powerful member of the collective party, who regularly protect breaks powerful data bugs in two blasts of her summon spells?

There's no random players currently in Carmina Gadelica. Instead, there's these four players lining the street leading south from the Chaos Gate.

By the way, if anyone can name this voice actor for me, I'd be greatly appreciative. I feel like I should know who he is.

[video type="youtube"]542lNMfmPGA[/video]

Anyway, with the impending boss battle, I decide to check my stocks before heading out. Good thing I did, too!

Eighteen Health Potions is woefully low. Twelve more are pretty expensive, but it can't be helped. Damage can come fast and hard out of nowhere, and chucking potions is often the only way to survive it.

It was also around this time that I checked the party's equipment inventory and did something seemingly strange and potentially stupid.

As annoying as he is, it won't do to have him under equipped for whenever the game forces him along with us. Plus we've had an axe for him wasting valuable inventory space for a while now.

His equipment was so outdated that everything I bought from the store received that same response.

With the life and skill drain effects from his super overpowered axe, he may even be worth bringing along on an outing! Just not today.

After Piros, next came another major annoyance.

His equipment was... lacking.

Besides the store items, he also got a necklace that makes him into as powerful a healer as Mistral!

After I dismissed Elk, I next tried his ever-present "girlfriend."

Apparently she isn't online. That's fine with me. Didn't really want to go broke outfitting party members I rarely use anyway.

It also turns out that Piros and Elk really like Kite now.

Let's get this party started. Before heading out, we call BlackRose.

She seems to have an idea of how much we rely on her and it's going straight to her head.

Inside, the dungeon looks pretty normal, if missing a lot of monster portals. There's only one between us and the way down! Also, if that's a partially dried lava bed outside, how is this normal stone wall dungeon not melted?

Surprisingly, floor 2 only has a single portal in our way as well. Inside the empty room, a cutscene finally takes over.

Video:

: I am totally into collecting items! Complete item list! Yeah! XD

: Um... I've been wanting to tell you...

: I see, you're role playing with that background story. I like those kinds of things. Good luck!

Anywho, the third floor has absolutely nothing on it, besides two chests with some scroll items. After waiting for whatever minute amount of SP was lost to recover, the party enters the purple mist door!

: At any rate, this girl... she's beautiful. But - I don't know how to say this, but she's... not alive.

Mistral's right. If being Data Drained puts a human into a coma, then what would it do to an AI? Especially if their data gets fragmented and scattered to the four winds?

The transition may seem a little jarring in screenshot form. Kite steps forward, the screen gets noise everywhere, Aura disappears, and then this massive platform appears under the party.

Sadly, from this point on, screenshots became much harder to capture. Many of them are going to appear unfocused and look like shakycam footage. I went through the recorded fight frame-by-frame and couldn't find very many shots that weren't blurry or shaky in some fashion. I apologize in advance. Sadly, that's the nature of the beast when dealing with Cubia.

Ladies and Gents, welcome to the Cubia fight. It sits behind us on the field and moans creepily every few seconds. At first it may appear complicated, but it's actually fairly simple.

There are two types of targets in the fight. First you have the Cubia Core, which starts out tolerant to either physical or magical damage. In this case here, it's tolerant to physical damage.

So I order Mistral to unload on the core to the exclusion of all else.

Meanwhile, these smaller things start floating out of the core. These are Gomoras, and there are four types. Pictured here are Kill Gomoras.

There are also Repth, Downer, and Varias Gomoras to worry about.

In order of importance, you have to worry about Repth Gomoras first and foremost. They will chain heal the Cubia Core for 400 health. Next in terms of importance are Varias Gomoras. These guys will chain cast status effects, and they prioritize the most debilitating kinds: confusion, charm, paralyze, and sleep.

Downer Gomoras are the next most worrisome kind. They will occasionally attack, but will also cast elemental weakness status effects. Finally, Kill Gomoras will simply charge a random party member for a fairly manageable chunk of damage.

Cubia will transition between phases of the fight whenever you either bring the Core down by between 500 and 750 damage, or when you kill all the Gomoras that the core spawns. When it transitions between phases, Cubia itself will attack you with one of three different attacks.

Video:

First you have Ark Bullet. Cubia basically just spits three glowing missiles at the party for pretty hefty damage.

Legion's Reach is Cubia using its roots to smack the party around. It also deals hefty damage. In this case, it very nearly killed both Kite and Mistral.

Finally, you have Megiddo Flame. Cubia's neck launches several massive fireballs at the party. Yes, that's two shots of damage. The attack hits anyone in range twice!

Anyway, after Cubia phase transitions, the Core reappears, as well as a bunch of Gomora. Usually it's at least one of each special type, as well as three Kill Gomora. Typically there are two Varias Gomora.

When the core is Magical Tolerant, I swapped Mistral to healing duty and focused down the annoying Gomora with Blackrose's help. Then we beat on the core until it transitioned back to Physical Tolerance.

The fight continues as such until the core runs out of HP. It took about five transitions for the party to bring the beast down. This also marked the longest fight yet, at over 16 minutes in length! That's an average of a little over three minutes per tolerance, which isn't too bad.

The fight is a massive pain in the ass, but it's not what I would call hard. Just tedious. Most of the time that you're fighting is going to be spent in menus. It's actually a fairly clever tutorial fight. The ability to focus your team in different roles has been available since the beginning of Infection. But this is the first fight where doing so makes your life a thousand times easier.

Eventually Mistral blows up the core and several of the nearby Gomoras and ends the fight.

Video:

After all that hard work, Cubia just wakes up and flies off. Kinda disheartening.

Video:

: You defeated Cubia... I'm impressed.

: Ms. Helba.

: Don't call me "Ms." Anyway, what you must do is...

: Is...?

The game actually swaps the camera angle and pans down from the moon for this one line. So it's Extremely Important.

: Would that lead to helping Orca?

: A question of possibility. That's all I can say for now.

: I'm sorry I joked about it. It's just the way I am... X{ I won't say good luck because you are trying hard. I know that you are trying hard, so I won't say it.

I'm so glad we gave Piros our e-mail address. I love when he spams the shit out of it. Ah well, looks like next time we've got quite a lot on our plates! A pretty blatantly obvious new party member, some requests, Goblin Tag, Natsume being level ~360(?), lots of good stuff.

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